The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – Alpha Bette by Jennifer Manocherian

Episode Date: December 4, 2023

Alpha Bette by Jennifer Manocherian https://amzn.to/3uFEQiB HOW TO RATTLE YOUR NEAREST AND DEAREST A resonant tale of love, loss, and learning how to let go Bette Gartner, a ninety-five-year-old widow, wakes up one morning and decides to throw a dinner party that night for her small family, staff, two neighbors, and a medium—and no one knows why. The story takes place over the course of the day and is told through the multiple points of view of Bette’s guests, switching back and forth between them as we learn about their motivations, dreams, hopes, and fears. These various storylines converge at the dinner table, where the coming together of different personalities, each with their own tensions and pain points, erupts into epiphanies, resolutions, and new beginnings before the final act of the evening Bette has planned. Alpha Bette is more than the story of a particular family’s history. Aside from recounting how the characters navigate the daily mundanities of urban life, it also dwells on their larger existential anxieties and the impact of the holes and absences that deceased and displaced loved ones leave behind.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast. The hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show. The preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. Chris Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. The Chris Voss Show.com. We'll let the Iron Lady do it. It's old habits I heart after 15 years, folks.

Welcome to the big show. Thank you for coming by, our family and friends. As always, we bring you the most smartest people, the people of a lifetime where they have learned so much. They have endured so much. They have survived so much. They bring you their stories. And as we always say on the Chris Voss Show, stories are the owner's manual to life.

And there you go. We have the author of the newest book that just came out September 5th, 2023, Alpha Betty. Did I pronounce it correctly? Alpha Betty? Jennifer? That's a good question. I tend to call her Alpha Bet. Alpha Bet.

I should have asked that before the show. Like Bette Davis. Ah, Bette Davis. There you go. So Alpha Bet came out September, Bette Davis eyes. There you go. So AlphaBette came out. Bette Midler. Bette Midler. Oh, yeah.

Bette Midler, too. Yeah. There you go. AlphaBette came out September 5th, 2023 by Jennifer Manacharian. And she's going to be on the show with us. You probably heard her already. And telling us about her amazing new book and how she wrote it and kind of her life journey, which is kind of interesting as well. It's her first novel. She put much of her personal and

professional life and experience writing it, having been a family therapist, divorce mediator, Broadway and off-Broadway producer, musical book writer, screenwriter, and producer, and screenwriting teacher. She co-wrote and produced the films Family Blues and Boundary Waters. It's in production right now, as well as wrote the book of two musicals that are streaming online, Mary Harry, a full-length musical, and Cockroaches in Cologne, a short musical. She is a proud member of the New York stage and film, the Peace Studio, and 18 by vote. She is married with five children and many grandchildren, etc. And I think what's interesting is she's called herself the Grandma Moses of Writers since she published this first book at 85. And so we expect a lot of work from here, from here on out. Welcome to the show, Jennifer. How are you? What does that comment mean? We need to see, you know, one every year from here on out,

about 20 or 30 more books. Definitely. There you go. There you go. We have, we have a few prolific older writers on the show and they're pumping out the books, man. The great thing about being an author is you can be as old as you want to be i hope that i hope they don't take each one doesn't take me as long as the first one that's the joke i always tell people it took me 50 years to write my first book at this pace would be another 50 years well i have my second one in the pipeline there you go that's good to know jennifer give us your dot coms where can people find you on the interwebs learn learn more about you? You can, there's a bunch of them, but I do have my own website, which is my name.

All lowercase. No, nothing, no dot in between. JenniferManiturian.net. And on that, I have access to, it has information about my book and about other things I've done, the films and stuff. And that's, I don't know, if you put in my name, you'll find me in a lot of places.

There you go. Maybe places I don't belong, but. Uh-oh. Sounds like my OnlyFans account that I have. I don't know what that means. There's no OnlyFans, people. Stop writing me. So anyway, guys, give us a 30 30 000 overview of the book okay the book is basically the story it's the main character

is a woman of 95 who wakes up one morning and something happens and she feels like she's maybe gotten a sign from her dead husband and she makes a decision that night to give a dinner party and for a very the very few people that are remaining in her life her her daughter her great-granddaughter a couple of neighbors and her her aid she needs an aid because she's in a wheelchair and her housekeeper so it's a small group and also includes a medium. But her role is never exactly explained. It's for people to figure out. But everything takes place over the course of that day, but all the different main characters in it have their own point of view.

So it's one of these books that's multiple points of view. And through those points of view, you get to learn what their backstories are, who they are, and how they all kind of relate to one another. And one of the through lines is that the old lady, she's Bette. And her husband's name was George. And he had a connection with all the people who were in her party list. And so you find out more about him as well he kind of connects everybody to one another so that's the story there you go and so what inspired you to want to write this you've you've actually i mean that you're becoming an author at

85 you've written a lot of different things actually what made you finally decide to put this pen to paper well i had been i was curious about whether or not i had the ability to write any kind of a narrative story because i always i'm a big reader and i never in my life thought i could write a novel i mean it was like like a fantasy or maybe a nightmare i don't know i just didn't think i could do it but i started a writing group that was like every two weeks for a period of I've been I'm still in the group in fact I met with them today and through it I started writing stories and I found that I could write that way but I could write a short story I could write 500 words

a novel basically that a novel begins at about 60,000 words so it was a shock to me that I was able to do it. But I started developing stories. And then when COVID came around, I, you know, I was stuck at home. I was, at that time, I was a theater producer, and theater pretty much came to a halt. And so, I was, my office closed, I was home, and I used the time to really try to figure it out. But I didn't. Writing a book takes a village, I'll have to tell you that. It's not a soul activity. So I had people who read it, and I also passed it through a developmental editor. It was a long, long road. So it was kind of a dream.

And as I say, if COVID hadn't happened and I hadn't been kind of confined to my home for a period of a couple of years, I don't know if it would have happened. That's awesome. I mean, COVID wasn't awesome, but, you know, we've had so many great authors on the show who, you know, they published their first books because of COVID. I published mine over COVID. You know, it was a dark time, but it seems like a lot of maybe some beauty and some great things came out of it. For me, it was a very productive time. I wasn't commuting because I don't, I live outside the city. I didn't have to commute. And I do have a writing group that I work with and they're all writers and they're all published writers. And so I wasn't totally isolated. We often would spend most of the day on Zoom and we may not even be talking to one another.

But we were there as a resource to one another. So if I had a question about something or, you know, they knew what my work was, I knew what their work was. So we kind of used each other as sounding boards. Ah, that's awesome. That's how I got mine done. We had an accountability group where we said we would write for an hour a day and then we would all have to post

every night if we did the hour or not or how much time we did. Would you post what you wrote? No, just that we did the hour. So we did that. When you guys did yours, were you guys writing as you guys were sitting on the Zoom call?

Yeah, we were writing. I mean, my computer is to the side of me, and I would have my Zoom on my iPad. And we would go on mute. And then if somebody had a question, maybe you were looking for the precise word, or you were worried about whether you would should turn the beginning should be where it was or whatever the question was yeah we would go off mute and we would talk for a while then we go back on mute and it you know what also during i during covid when it was so isolating it was amazing having a community you know i didn't ever feel

like i was completely cut off. Yeah. That's good to have. I like your accountability group because, you know, you're sitting there writing together. Like, I know when we had my accountability group, we'd be like, are you really writing out? Then every now and then we get together and have a little meetup and stuff. And we're actually launching one here.

I just want to add to that. We also meet once a year. We have a week. We go away for a week together. Oh, really? meetup and stuff and we're actually launching one here i i just want to add to that that we also meet once a year we have a week we go away for a week together oh really and we and during that time we really really write i mean that is kind of a dedicated time to writing and we write all day we share at night and we do writing prompts or you know it's everybody's everybody in my group is published one woman is like doing her seventh novel. Holy crap. You've got a hell of an accountability group going on there.

As you flesh out the characters in this book and develop your protagonist, tell us about some of these characters that are in there, why you chose them, any of them are a reflection of yourself or people in your life? I mean, in your introduction, you had kind of suggested maybe or inferred there was autobiographical elements to it, which there are not. But I also don't think you can only write from who you are and what you know and who you know. So I think in a way you could argue that any book has got by autobiographical elements to it it's you know how you think the ideas that come to your mind how you see the world it all comes through but there's nobody who's strictly autobiographical and but i i it's hard to describe there's it the old lady in a way maybe she's a composite of me and my mother my mother my mother got tougher as she got older and and maybe i am too i don't know i asked my grandchildren but um but i there's i mean she was she's very very independent she's

like almost like militantly independent. And my mother was like that. My mother was very much like that. And in a way, my mother would be a model for her because I was given a writing prompt when I was in the group, I don't know, many, many years ago, about someone seeing themselves in a mirror. And I chose to do that prompt based on having my mother. I hadn't seen my mother. My mother was in a wheelchair, and she hadn't seen herself for years. And one day she was passing a full-length mirror,

and she said, can you stop? I want to see what I look like. And I was so struck by that, and it became kind of the beginning. At one point I had this old lady to see herself herself where she hadn't seen herself in a long time. Wow. In any event, that's basically, there are elements of it, other elements of it that maybe I took from my life. There's a scene in a hospital where an old man is injured and it was very much based on something that happened in real life with my father. So I was really taking more the knowledge

of what it's like in the ER and what had gone on rather than the character of my father. But so you use, listen, you write, you use different things you know. Yeah. I mean, I just wrote a business book so it was pretty easy i just wrote oh stupid stories and ads doing what you guys do with novels and creating characters and designing your plots and layout that's that's a whole lot more challenge i mean you you guys have to basically create a village or a city yeah it was it was that's what i said it was really hard i couldn't believe i did it i mean it was it was very it was very tough because I had these separate characters. But then when I came up with the idea that they were all somehow connected to her,

I had to really find ways in which to integrate them into her life. I mean, she's got, do I, there's nobody I can say that really is autobiographical but I mean her daughter is a woman who's in her early 70s and she's really she's probably a composite of people I know obviously I wanted to make each character different the voice of each character different. I wanted them to be very real and living in my head

because with any writing that I do, developing the character is just the most important part of it. Every character has to be real to me. I have to know how that person, I have to internalize each character. And I work hard on that. What I say I work hard on that I mean that's what I say I work hard what I mean is that character is going to live in my head when I'm

driving in my car when I'm trying to go to sleep at night I make I have them come to life so that they have their own very distinct voice in their way of being in the world it feels authentic because authenticity if a character isn't real it's not good at all i have a i have a visitor not now not now thank you just let me have this in the go ahead not now please it's fine i apologize you said a child might come in. I can't talk now. I'm not on a radio show. Okay, I'll look at it later, okay? I'm sorry. It's totally fine.

I mean, some people, they just want their SAG card. No, she doesn't want her. I don't think she wants her SAG card. But she wanted to show me her report card. There you go. She's probably proud of that. But she wanted to show me her report card. There you go. There you go. She's probably proud of that.

Probably proud of it. I never wanted to show anybody my report card because I was going to get in trouble. She wouldn't be showing me if she wasn't proud of it. Exactly, yeah. There you go. I'm sorry. That was cute. That was cute.

I hope I didn't hurt her feelings. Anyway. So maybe she'll be in my next book there you go so many different people in my life that they nobody has said to me oh my god you wrote did you ask me if I could

be your character nobody has really felt like this is who you this is the character I've nailed so everybody's maybe bits and pieces of everybody but what I was talking about the scene of an old man being in the hospital with an accident I have to say my son when he read the book he kind of called me up and said god mom why'd you do that it was like it took him right back to a scene where he had gone with my father to the emergency room. And it was very traumatic because my father had had code blue twice while he was there.

And it was real enough to him when he read it that it took him right back there. It was so hopefully that's what I talk about authenticity. You want to make everything feel very real. It feels like a real element that's actually happened and everything else. You've done a lot of former careers on Broadway and off-Broadway. How did those help or hinder the process? You know, you did a screenwriter, in fact, as well. Well, actually, this year, I filmed it.

I had written. We filmed it, and it's right now in post-production. In fact, this morning I had to get up at 5. I didn't have to. I got up at 5 because they were recording the score for it in London, and we were allowed to watch them doing that, which was really an amazing, very exciting process. And we're just finishing up the film.

But writing in different mediums you know it's every medium is they're all different each craft is different they really are the the most basic thing to all of them if there are two basics i mean there has to be the characters have to be well understood they have to be authentic they have to real. That's true in whatever medium you write. And you have to have the arcs. You have to have the story arc. You have to have the character arc. Those are kind of givens. But in terms of the actual writing of it, they're very, very different. Having been written for film, which is dialogue-based, and you create little scenes, and you have a camera as your best friend

I don't have to be describing exactly what's happening, we're seeing it we're seeing it being enacted so you set it up in terms of your direction so to speak but in a novel

you don't have that and that was the hardest part for me in terms of writing narrative fiction But in a novel, you don't have that. And that was the hardest part for me in terms of writing narrative fiction, having to really bring the reader in with me and see where we are and understand the action and see who's, you know, you pick up the phone rings and she's answered the phone while she was opening her letter. You know, whatever it is, you have to really just help the reader into the scene so that they can actually see it and feel it and understand it and what what were some of the pros and cons from writing for multiple point of views that you did with your characters? I don't know that there are any pros to it.

I mean, the biggest con is making sure that each person has his or her own distinct voice. And I had characters, I have the old lady who's 95, the youngest person, there's a housekeeper and she has like a 16-year-old daughter. So, she's not a main character, but she's a sub-character. But that's the age range. And in between, I have different people of different ethnicities, different types of work. You know, it's a range of all different people,

people who were kind of to the manner born and others who had always worked all their lives. It was making sure each of those people felt very legitimate and real. But again, it goes back to character and understanding who your characters are. Now, at the time I was writing, one of my challenges, which isn't something that I've talked about before, but was trying to figure out where COVID fits into it. Because it's almost like a before and after book. I mean, it wasn't a book about COVID at all.

But the question is, where do you then place it in time? If you make it in 2019, you don't have to even think about COVID. Mm-hmm. But if you place it in 2024 and you're writing it in 2022, you don't even know if in 2024 it'll be over. Mm-hmm. So that was somewhat of a challenge in terms of writing, trying to figure out. I placed it like in, I didn't, I don't know if i dated it per se that way but i made it in 2024 and i assumed at that time life would be normal enough that people wouldn't be going around in masks and stuff but i refer to it someone and was there a reason you picked

that time as opposed to like i don't know going back going back 20, 30, 40, 50 years, maybe? I wouldn't have, I don't know how you write a book of something that took place 30, 40 years ago. I mean, that requires a lot of research. I wouldn't have a reason for doing that. You know, I wanted it to be contemporary. And, you know, there's so much, the whole electronic age has exploded i mean i i sometimes my mother died in 2000 and i sometimes think you know if either one of my parents were to come back today what on earth would they make of this world you know there's there's so much change has gone on you know electronically and in so many oh my god not to mention the whole political

world the world that we're in we're in a terrible time right now with the wars and everything i i i wanted to make it contemporary and i just it was a decision it was like an arbitrary decision is to when you're in the midst of covid and you're writing a book, how far in advance can you make it that you can be pretty sure it's going to work? So I felt I was safe, and I think I was. But, you know, there's still, listen, people, my husband still wears a mask. I mean, people are afraid. Yeah, it's been going around again some more, from what I understand. Yeah.

Yeah. So, I feel like that's, I mean, figuring out your time frame is really interesting in terms of what you write. And, you know, how you deal with people's ability to deal with the electronics. I don't do a lot of that. I have a little of it in the book. But, you know, I have a woman who's 95 and the chances are she's not going to be spending all day on her iPad or her or making well people it you have to make a lot of choices and you have to think about your characters and what's what they're going to actually be capable of doing or what's comes

naturally to them. If it's a young person, they practically come out of the womb these days able to change wallpaper on your iPad. I think that's a prerequisite. I think so. Yeah, they're programmed. Definitely.

So they understand how it goes. So very insightful. This is quite a journey. You put out your first book at 85. Congratulations. And, uh, people know how old I am.

I mean, I, that was a decision too. It's, it's a marketing tool. Yeah. I mean, I mean,

there's, it's one of those things I see, you know, memes all the time about this, that a lot of people, you know, they, they achieve success later on in their life.

You know, they can KFC guy. I think he started when he was like 50 or 60 or something. Really? Yeah, I don't know the exact dates. Yeah, the guy who started Kentucky Fried Chicken. When did KFC founder start? I think he was late in life. Oprah Winfrey started late in life, if I understand.

Oh. He turned 40. Oh, well, that's a youth. Yeah. You figure that was in 1930. And so you probably only lived a very short time back in those days. So 40 was probably like, you know, I don't know. Did you read about Warren Buffett's partner died today at the age of about 100, I guess.

Yeah. Yeah. And believe me, he was, he was apparently doing a lot of analysis and everything else for all the decisions that were made in that company. So. There you go. So I'm going to sell stock now on that company thing there. I don't know. But if you listen, you have to have curiosity. You have to have your health.

That's a biggie. Yeah. Health is good. Otherwise you to have your health. That's a biggie. Yeah, health is good. Otherwise, you're just not here. So, there you go. You have to have energy. My mother kept going all her life, and I feel like she can't. It's in my DNA. I just was

given a lot of good genes in terms of both longevity and energy. And then I was exposed to a lot growing up culturally. So it's, you know, I just have a lot of interests and life to me remains an adventure. There you go.

And, and maybe that's why you, you have such a knack for this in writing and stuff is you, you've kept that open mind over the years. I think, I think I would make, this is a generalization and maybe it's not accurate, but I think that writers, by and large, are outsiders.

You know, you're people who look into the window. You're looking in the window more than you're in the party. All my life, I've never really been somebody. I've always had very disparate types of friends, different groups I belong to. I've never been kind of the, I've never fit into a niche, shall we say. I've always felt like I'm somewhat of an outsider, and not in a bad way, but it just gives me perspective. There you go. And it gives you perspective and helps you write.

And you've, you know, you've done so much in developing the thing and you've already got your second book in the can that you're working on. Do you have a title for it yet? No. And I worked very hard on the title of my first book because I felt like nobody's ever heard of me.

Why would any, I, at least I had to have going for me a good cover and a good title. There you go. It took a long time. I had one of my nieces was trying to find out

but she was constantly sending me title suggestions. I mean, it was a very long, titles can be so tough. Yeah. When I was in theater, I'm still,

anyway, one of the plays that I was involved with was Stomp, which as far as I'm concerned, that was a little sitting on a gold mine there. Oh, yeah. And did you ever see Stomp? I've seen parts of the show.

Oh. Just on like video and stuff and TV. Oh, it's phenomenal. It's great fun. Yeah. And it's for all ages. And could you have a better title? I mean, it's five words they need to mark

it and it tells you what it is and i've always felt particularly you know in theater when you have to have you know sell a show you can have really terrible titles that you can have a great show with a title that's impossible so i've always felt very strongly about branding in that regard and it's and sometimes it's just really hard and you just gotta sit with it and talk about it and maybe get other people's ideas and you're lucky if it lands i felt like i came up with a good title though definitely definitely but i changed her name once Once I came up with the idea, she had a whole other name. I mean, this poor old lady had more names than you can imagine. I probably changed her name ten times.

But when you're writing with Word, all you have to do is do find replace, and you can change names very easily. So all my characters go through a lot of name changes. It's basically just forming and shaping and sequencing down to what it is and how it goes. Any final thoughts or tease-outs on the book before we go? Ah, tease-outs. Pretty soon there's going to be an audible version of it. There is already on Barnes & Noble, I know has it. A couple of sites do have it. tease outs pretty soon there's going to be an audible version of it there actually there is

already on barnes and noble i know has it a couple of sites do have it and i have since each of my characters come is very very different it'll be interesting to see if people how it tracks in terms of each chapter being a different point of view because i've got um anyway that if people like multiple points of view if you like there's a lot of books that have been very successful lately it's a it's kind of a to me it's a style that some people will like some people won't like actually my writing i have to say is my first my opening paragraph, actually my opening sentence will either invite people in or turn them off. I feel I have a certain dryness or sense of humor that kind of comes through in my writing. And I'm hoping people who have a sense of humor and who like

fiction with well-developed characters will like my book and it has an ending that's for many people a surprise and most for most people it's a very satisfying ending for some people they don't like it i'm sorry about that sometimes those some of the great books are the ones that catch you on the first line when it opens right my first line we'll see yeah I've read some first lines of some of the others we have on the show and I've

been just like oh yeah I gotta find out what the hell's going on here I heard the first line of a novel today that I wrote down I have to get this novel it's called owner of first line of a novel today that I wrote down. I have to get this novel. It's called Owner of a Lonely Heart. And the first, I have to paraphrase it because I don't have it in front of me, the exact quote. But she said, I only knew my mother, I only knew, throughout my life, I only had 24 hours with my mother.

That's a very provocative opening. Yeah. You really wonder, what does that mean? What's going on there? Yeah. Owner of a Lonely Heart? Yeah, but now I'm selling her book. I want to sell mine.

Beth Nijin? Oh, you're looking it up? Yes. She's Asian. I'm not quite sure Beth Nijen. Nijen? Nijen? Nijen? Oh, you're looking it up? Yes. She's Asian. I'm not quite sure what her last name is, but it sounds like an amazing book. It just sounded familiar to me, and I was just checking to see if we've had her on the show.

Oh, interesting. We want her. We have so many people on the show. It doesn't look like we have her on the show, but we might have seen the book and invited her at the time. So there you go. All right. This has been wonderful and very insightful and fun to have you on the show, Jennifer. I'm so glad that you're pumping out these books and you found a whole new

career doing stuff. Who knows what my next evolution will be. It will be wonderful to see. And please come back for that as well. So, Jennifer, give us your.com so we can find you on the interwebs. Okay. It's jennifermanagerian.net. There you go.

And it's HTTPS, not a WW, no W, no three Ws. No three Ws. Okay. Sounds good then. Thank you for coming on the show. Thanks for tuning in. Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris F LinkedIn.com, Fortuna's Christmas, YouTube.com, Fortuna's Christmas, Christmas one on the tickety-tockety and Christmasfacebook.com.

Thanks for tuning in. Be good to each other. Stay safe. We'll see you guys next time.